On Saturday, May 17, Jack Shainman opened The School, his new 30,000-square-foot gallery in Kinderhook, a town in New York’s Hudson Valley. Hundreds of art-world insiders gathered to watch a glittering performance by a dance troupe clad in Nick Cave’s soundsuits (the artist’s famous wearable fabric sculptures). Inside the Federal-style building, which once housed an elementary school (built in 1929 and renovated by Spanish architect Antonio Jiménez Torrecillas for Shainman), Cave has curated the gallery’s inaugural show with a deft selection of his soundsuits, sequin-and-bead-filled panels, and mixed-media works hewn from ornate arrangements of metal flowers, vintage furniture, and ceramic animals—all pieces that use found materials to explore race and gender issues.

The exhibition leads viewers around a central artery that winds downstairs to a 3,500-square-foot subterranean chamber, the school’s former gymnasium. “For me, it’s about elevating each moment as one moves through the space until you reach this core,” says Cave, who used the gallery’s expanses to showcase a powerful new collection of sculptures, which will move to Shainman’s Chelsea spaces in September.

From left: Untitled, 2014; Sacrifice, 2014; and Untitled, 2014.

Cave’s new series began with a flea market find in Wisconsin: a spittoon in the shape of an African-American man’s head, which he affixed atop an installation of ship paintings and dubbed Sea Sick. The discovery of the spittoon sent him on a cross-country journey to find more relics from the Jim Crow era that he then incorporated into complex new structures. “It’s me sort of renegotiating and repositioning the object and its meaning,” explains Cave, who says he wants to produce a newspaper with the new works and feature images of the actual memorabilia, explaining where each was found and how it was originally described. While he’s not retiring the soundsuits—which dazzled many an Instagram feed from inside The School’s light-bathed atrium—Cave admits, “I’m going to put them in the safe-deposit box for a minute.”

The exterior of Jack Shainman’s new exhibition space, The School.

The School is open by appointment Tuesday through Saturday year-round and will be open to the public from 11 A.M. to 5 P.M. each Saturday through mid-August; jackshainman.com/school